Varis

Fun, different and professional! Camera work and editing is outstanding, and other dimensions fit in well The ending was maybe a bit abrupt... could have been a bigger climax. After a week or two on the vehicle server, I was expecting a thermal shot after seeing the helicopter... but at least there was one NV one I think

Respawn seems to be to squad members (does it work for AI as well?) instead of a dedicated respawn vehicle (transport). Is one of the main design goals intense infantry combat? It seems possibility for large maneuver is lost since a defender cannot focus on the respawn vehicle.

Yeah that's pretty important but isn't it MUCH easier to answer once he/she has tried a few different game modes? Co-op vs PvP (Player versus Player) is one big dimension. Same for infantry or vehicle centric. I'd try if you can find some nice people to play Zeus mode with (co-op) and you could even try the CTI/EUTW (PvP) - with the strict reservation that you need to learn to identify factions based on their uniform. Please note that you can filter servers based on the game mode category - each category will have a few variable game modes or server types under it.

For PvP King of the Hill is the cookie cutter solution. No mods required if you don't play on RHS servers. Go for the infantry servers (not vehicle) to reduce the challenge level. You might enjoy Escape or Zeus mode for co-op. Zeus experience tends to be very variable though - I'd rate it mostly casual anyway.

Remaining major hopes for multiplayer experience would then seem to be to 1) community to wrap up the best potential into a really good game mode 2) new assets and vehicles from 3rd party DLCs Tanks DLC was the #1 thing I had to actually wait for. ARMA3 has already achieved so much and with 500 hours total clocking I'm only starting to piece together how great a game it is. Though "platform" might be a more accurate label

Having 2 out of the 3 new vehicles actually not be tanks but IFV/AFV may seem strange but I think it makes a lot of sense. Mostly I've played KotH & CTI and ARMA3 so far has seemed quite tank centric, whereas the real militaries place heavy emphasis on lighter IFVs. In computer games there is often an "apex predator syndrome" as I call it in various forms. Players and developers prefer the more expensive, capable and charismatic units over the variety of low-to-mid tier stuff. Maybe it dominates the meta or just looks more sexy and sells more copies. About 1 year back when I started KotH I felt that vehicle servers were dominated by tigris & slammer tanks. It's a bit different today and it feels that variety has increased for some reason. Also I notice that ARMA already incorporates a number of AFV - but I think they are underrepresented in actual gameplay. It could be due to balance and issues with individual vehicles. Maybe many don't have a clear role like the nyx perhaps does, then there are things like the mora which I guess after the update has started to slide around quite a bit - it's like you're doing drifting instead of driving a tracked vehicle at times, and the handling is a bit too twitchy for many. I've also felt jeeps are neglected, the basic minigun/MG jeeps don't seem to have much of a role besides infantry transport. Creating AT variants sounds like a really good move - again I think we don't see them much in actual gameplay for some reason. There could also be jeep or truck mounted AA platforms, just an idea.

So are we basically waiting for the next major update to ARMA3 to play Vanguard again? BTW is there an up to date write up of the ARMA3 release model? (Eg. different branches and what are general schedules/steps for different stuff to be pushed from the dev to the end user.)

To my delight it seems there's been a few changes to ARMA (and the game mode) to allow slightly more breathing space for pawnee pilots. But much more probably could be done to allow more vehicle play and improve the experience of the game mode: 1) Vehicles tend to be expensive, thus people save up money, buy the thing and when it (soon) gets blown up it's back to infantry centric play with fighting over the control points and mobile spawns. Alternative methods of billing should be explored - for example the real cost of a pawnee already is not in the purchase but ammunition and maintenance. Although ammo is slightly too expensive - few people use laser pointers so you can't concentrate on your targets - it can be a good idea because the helicopter could be cheap and allow near-constant access to any competent pilot. 2) Jeeps don't get used much, including this game mode. In Battlefield 2 they saw regular usage thanks to game design and jeeps being somewhat overpowered - in ARMA, infantry can hide easily while gunners on most jeeps are not protected and thus are vulnerable to snipers and whatnot. Also their HMGs are quite ineffective against pawnees and other helicopters. However I feel they should be an ubiquitous support asset to every army since they could be an affordable counter to infantry. To address lethality, their cost could simply be lowered to balance it. And the transport role could be boosted - in KotH they serve a considerable role in getting you to the battlefield, though most players just prefer the helicopters because they let you parachute to your death faster. Could we increase the number of flag areas and make capture faster - thus it would make sense to drive around with a jeep and a bunch of friends taking over one point after another, BF2 style? Or would it just make the fights smaller/dispersed and have other undesirable gameplay effects like the fight being over when you've deployed properly with your kit and stuff? With the current setup, players are driven to use the heavier / arbitrary mechanisms of travel: fast travel (teleport) and the mobile HQ spawn points, decreasing somewhat from teamplay and authenticy. 3) Like many other games, ARMA3 seems to display an "apex predator syndrome" where vehicle play is biased towards the high-end vehicles, namely tanks, tigris, kajman and especially jets. The Tanks DLC surprisingly brought some relief with lighter IFVs introduced - perhaps they should be given a discount price until more people learn to use them on the battlefield? 4) The pawnee has a special niche in being very agile and easy to fly. Yet it's available only to blufor and takes away from the fun of other faction players. Perhaps the pawnee should be given a universal role in each faction's arsenal, but possibly with a limited selection of loadouts. The orca and lynx could be more heavily armed helicopters for more seasoned pilots. 5) Selection of the guns in the game mode is quite modest, I think that puts off many infantry players. I guess there is a reason for this, but I can't figure out why the selection is so limited.

Did exactly that a bit back... a bit expensive for a game but I got everything including a few DLC which were not yet published back then. Haven't regretted it one bit! (No previous ARMA experience, just a bit of brand recognition, TBH ARMA must be a bit scary to most potential players, sorta like the girl you never dared to ask )

Carrier Command uses ARMA engine? I played the original... way back... haven't checked the recent remake.

Great combined arms. Infantry - helicopter interplay. Great terrain for infantry to sneak and fight around. Smörgåsbord of game modes. New to the series and currently 386 hours clocked, over a 1.5 years.

I recently managed to fix my ARMA3 installation and am looking forward to try not just KotH/RHS but of course the Vanguard mode as well. The new mode looked interesting in the release, with vehicle play and reminiscent of the Capture the Relic mode from the long gone days of Battlezone 2 (1998 - there's a nice remaster on Steam as well). However when I look, all Vanguard servers seem to be in Waiting with 0 players. What has gone wrong?

KotH is probably closest to mainstream shooters as comes in ARMA3. CTI/EUTW is another well designed game mode which is accessible and features a much more natural military operation.

Another bump for this game mode. I've played a fair bit of KotH and going to CTI/EUTW was a natural step up. I still play mostly KotH but this is a very good take at accessible combined arms. Besides being slightly more HC, what makes this game mode stand out in comparison to KotH is the action focused on the control points. No more walking through ghost towns - if you can't find the enemy near the flag, the enemy sure will find you. Also there is a logical progression to the war with the frontline advancing as one control point is lost (captured) after another. Last but not least, the battlefield is not an endless small town but control points tend to be small military depots or remote villages - with a fair deal of action dispersed to the wilderness as mobile spawn points can be freely located and most of the time, teams want to hide them well. I've been away from CTI for several months but yesterday I had a nice 20-30 min run with the pawnee. Was targeted by missiles only twice - the second time it was a shikra and I went down in flames. The shikra died shortly after for some proper justice thanks to a friendly AA tank - mostly it seems our AA pawnee was taking out the air threats. If you know how to keep your heli alive the game mode can be a good entry point to the real battlefield. The slow trickle of funds will guarantee a modest vehicle threat of all sorts - with crews of all skill levels. With the pawnee you pay for reloads so there is little risk of endless rocket spam either. Locating targets is still an issue as few people seem to equip laser pointers or know how to coordinate with helicopter CAS. In CTI a particular downside is the risk of hitting friendly troops, for some reason they like to cluster inside the control point circles

Would love to try out the new Tanks DLC + update but Steam keeps having an issue installing the 15.2GB patch. I've cleared the download cache, moved Steam default folder to another drive, and re-downloaded the 15.2GB twice, but still no go. Everything seems fine until at the very end of the Installing... step where the estimated time remaining is first about 50 seconds or 3 minutes and the starts slowly climbing until it says "over one year" and then Steam just apparently gives up and starts from the Verifying... step all over again. Looking at Windows Task Manager, I see one of my drives (previously Steam default folder) is maxed out at 100% load. This is an older disk drive from at least 5 years back... but technically it should have little to do with the installation by now. Before you flame me about putting ARMA on such an old shit rig I have to say that the other drives are 2 x modern day SSD (eg. Samsung 960). I checked with the standard tool WIMC and there were no SMART issues given for the drive... so not sure what's with this, I have to say that I for some weird reason have only 8GB of RAM physically installed and I didn't check if this might affect it (I have closed the web browser while updating so I don't think it's an issue). What gives, have you seen this problem and is it time to reinstall ARMA?

Great stuff. Thanks for the help! Actually during the whole update process it seems disk space sunk even down to 20 GB free, and now remains at 28 GB even after clearing download cache. I guess not all bloat is bad Still claims ARMA3 only takes 31 GB on disk. It's a bit surprising one of the applications Western society is built upon is so inflexible. Then again, I mentioned Windows too...

Well foxtrot me - I recently freed more space on the drive (SSD) and now the patching is successful. But disk space does sink from 54 to 39 GB while the process is ongoing. On to download the 5.8 GB patch... Guess it's strongly recommended to reserve a bit of extra space to Steam, not just Windows. NAND manufacturers will be happy!

Cool - so all the stuff saved is under those folders?

One possible problem - if I tell Steam to just erase the game, what happens to all the scenarios I've created in the editor? I haven't even uploaded them online, because there must be too much crap already. Is there a good way to take a backup when not being able to even start the game?

One obvious solution is to reinstall ARMA 3 - didn't get around to trying that yet.

It's very strange then - it somehow uninstalled or got messed up by itself? Steam shows everything installed including all DLC and even some workshop content was succesfully updating in the meanwhile! But this could be an insightful comment - possibly the install status is somehow messed up and that's the exact thing what's not working and Steam gives up trying to mark the update done. PS. I bought the DLC2 bundle way back, and I think the Steam client installed that 2GB update succesfully first before proceeding with the 15.2GB one.

I love helicopters too, but wouldn't vote for the DLC. Besides a few nice time trials and the good platform update, the DLC adds vehicles that are mainly redundant. The helicopters that best work in the game (focusing on PvP) are the ones that are nimble but challenging to fly, come armed with just the minigun and rockets, orca and hellcat being the operational examples I'm talking of. Thus they don't have a great deal of firepower and can easily be given to players while most of the others are playing boots on the ground. They also can easily and safely get a bunch of troops to the front lines so what else do you need? That said, I guess the Taru has potential in delivering supplies to the front line, just haven't seen it used for that by the modes I play. Is the Support mode as much fun as the others? Laws of War is an intriguing approach from the educational point of view. Have you guys used cluster munitions, are they as much fun as they sound?

Hello ARMA3 world - Veteran of computer gaming for 35 years but an ARMA newbie - literally first tried the game only a couple weeks ago, have all the DLCs and previous titles now. Question (for newbs and vets): If you started with ARMA today, what would you do to get the most out of it as soon as possible? My primary concern is what kind of player groups to associate with, and how, but of course open for any other advanced ideas. Please note that I'll closely read the promising thread at to get a better touch of all the basics. (Watching videos is a good tip, I often skip that for other games, shame on me!) The rest of my post is just filling in my background to give you an idea where I'm coming from, organized in sections, feel free to skip through it as fast as you want or take your time: CV in short -Variable leadership positions in a number of clans starting from 1998; created my own in 2012 and it was a huge success -Prominent modder from Battlezone (1998) and Homeworld 2 (2003) -Some background from open source projects/Linux (yes includes skills in programming and internet architecture) Relevant gaming diet -Interest in simulators earlier on, HIND (1995) was the last significant experience and it waned from Longbow (1998) onwards as radar blips don't make for exciting enemies, a bit of DCS: Black Shark 2 -Also a good varied diet on shooters earlier on (latest one Planetside II, as well; expert on the lightning) -Was big into Battlefield 2 at the time, PKM, attack helis and jeeps (was #500 in global ranking at a point in these) being my weapons of choice -More strongly into strategy and indie titles nowadays, prefer turnbased (if I could get Steel Panthers II but with starships, that would be about as close to my ideal game as possible) Interests in ARMA3 so far -The vanilla game (with all the DLC save Karts) -Teamplay -The editor / scenarios -Zeus mode -Mods (my installed collection is very light so far) Finally I guess people come to ARMA from very different backgrounds, from the above you see I can take it from different angles. And they naturally adopt different roles / niches in the community - do you instantly see something that would be just natural for me or is in high demand currently? I expect to work full time, or more, during the coming months, though my schedules can be surprisingly flexible. About 20 hours per week is the absolute maximum I think I'd be able to spend on ARMA most weeks. So no over-ambitious modding projects taking 6 to 12 months - unless it's somebody else's pet project and I can just lend a hand one week and try something different the next week. Thanks for reading this far, the sandbox is full of toys!

That could be a working approach too and actually it's been a bit like that lately. I've been taking it casual, mostly due to lack of focus, and sinking a couple of hours to ARMA MP whenever I've had them to spare. I've found a few nice players and hooked up with them, sadly they haven't been active this week. I've found myself mostly playing PvP multiplayer, partly because I enjoy the unpredictable challenge of playing against human opponents, but also because the game experience is more predictable with the PvP game modes. For a while my mainstay was KotH, but now I'm graduating to CTI (capture the island) mode. Playing on the EUTW server, the latter appears better designed at the end of the day. The infantry action is well focused on the control points, so no walking through ghost towns. Vehicles are better balanced than KotH, you get to buy the high end stuff at the end of the round but it's hard to dominate the battlefield. Infantry deploys quickly with fast travel - eliminating the frustration of deployment, and while the ever present helicopter taxis aren't seen in this mode, there is still some role for helicopters. Sometimes I miss decent helicopter action with rockets and the works. But can't get everything in one package I guess.

Thanks again Seems days are busy again after the summer, and my daily stab at ARMA is usually just some casual KotH, having some old background in shooters (I even played Unreal Tournament seriously and Quake Wars: Enemy Territory) there is that familiar PvP rush, with the impressive detail and immersion of ARMA 3. Time to time also trying to improve in the Kiss the Ground time trial. Not so much experimentation right now. The search for the clan is still on, in principle. I guess I got a bit overwhelmed, like many people do, I think. A categorized index of clans could be nice (how about a few lists in wiki if that doesn't exist already). There are LOTS of different clans and many of them are milsim/realism/tactical, and even the ones that really aren't seem to like to name themselves 3507th Special Airborne Regiment or some such, not a good way to differentiate from a marketing perspective Maybe at first it's smarter to go to any open events or gatherings of regular players - for many clans it appears that "our playstyle" is the thing they are really organized around, and how do you know yours as a new player when you don't know half the game yet? Does ARMA embody a stratification of clans like Eve Online? A new player would join a clan that is open for newbies and has few requirements, then after 1-2 weeks of learning the rudimentaries of the game and having an idea about their path, they may go to a "real" clan with a serious agenda but which is welcoming to new players and typically has high-rate pilots only in the top ranks. There the player will get busy practicing their trade the best ones might leave in just a few weeks or months to join a clan in a serious branch of business like intensive PvP such as wormspace (high value assets/rewards only) or 0.0 alliances (large and often very powerful enemies in multiple aspects engaged in massive warfare). Typically a few years of high rate service in such a group can get you fit for moving to the top tier clans that go to the Alliance Tournament, and basically anywhere in the Eve universe they want. At that point you'd have a very good, broad view of the game, probably mastering a branch or two of business and owning top tier (faction) combat gear and performing far above the average combat pilot, even holding your own against several pilots with average level of gear/skills. Very demanding if you get to that level. Videos are a good tip, you can often learn quite well that way. I've been too lazy to watch videos in many other games too Also the editor, obviously you could place any type of target, use any type of weapon/gear and try out any type of scenario/concept with that. Highly useful for a new player... I don't think I've even tried to shoot half of the guns yet...